


Weight of Love

by poisonedapple



Series: Bardic Inspiration [5]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-16
Updated: 2017-08-16
Packaged: 2018-12-16 06:57:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11823540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poisonedapple/pseuds/poisonedapple
Summary: spicedupdruid asked “How can anyone not be afraid of love?” Scanlan asking Vex'ahlia





	Weight of Love

**Author's Note:**

> This is a reaction to an interaction between Scanlan and Vex in episode 107, takes place sometime during episode 108 probably.

Scanlan was trying to avoid Vex as best he could since retaking his gnome form.  They were traveling in a small party though, so it was a bit hard to manage however - especially when he kept finding himself sharing her broom.

He’d thought it would be funny, to ask Vex what she thought of him when he was divine and could suss out all lies.  Good for a laugh, nothing more.  Except he didn’t think he’d find brilliant white truth in Vex’s declaration that she loved him, that he was her favorite, that he was alright just the way he was - is.

There was no humor in that, just the unbridled terror that idea of love - actual love, not like his senseless declarations of love and harassment to Pike - Scanlan felt since finding and loving his own daughter.

“Something wrong, dear?” Vex asks, softly so the rest of Vox Machina could not over hear as they traveled on her broom, her behind him as she steers the broom.

“No,” Scanlan says so resolutely that even his own ears can hear the lie in them - no one had to be a Planetar to see the lie.  So Scanlan sighs and says, “It’s just… you said you loved me.”

“Yes,” Vex says with a smile in her voice, “We all do, you have to know.  You’re family.”

Scanlan feels like he’d heard this before - but it’s only just now that he feels the weight of that love truly, that he feels the truth in what Vex in saying.

“You  _meant_  it.”

“Of course, I did,” Vex says, frown evident in her voice even if Scanlan couldn’t see her.  Scanlan couldn’t help the shiver that traveled down his back.

“That’s… fucking scary,” His voice raised - Vex had slowed her broom to let the rest of Vox Machina get further away, so they could speak a bit more privately. 

“You find love… scary?”

“How can anyone not be afraid of love?”  He’d always found the twin’s love for each other terrifying - the bonds of love that kept this destructive group together was scary.  Hell, hadn’t love created the horror that the Briarwoods had done to the world?  Scanlan felt justified for his feelings, but obviously Vex did not.

Vex didn’t answer him for a while.  “I don’t understand that at all Scanlan.  I guess I’ve always… been more afraid of not being loved.”  Vex seems to flinch at her own confession.

Scanlan swallows something hard in his throat.  Swallows the confession that it was, in the end, not the goblins that had killed his mother - not entirely - but her love for him, as she had protected him and let him hide, and let him live while she had died.

Perhaps if he confessed, Vex might have confessed that she wasn’t sure if their mother had let their father take her and her brother because her mother hadn’t loved them enough.  That even now, she sometimes wished she had been with her mother at her mother’s end - as long as it meant that her mom had loved her.  Perhaps he might have understand the horror of lack of love, perhaps she would understand the weight of love.

But he swallows his words and Vex never shares her own.  Instead Vex just clears her throat and says, “We love you, Scanlan, darling.  I hope you know that know and I hope you know that you don’t need to fear it.”

Scanlan doesn’t understand still, still fears that love, but he nods anyway.


End file.
